The present exemplary embodiment relates generally to printing web-based content via a cloud print service. It finds particular application in using a print uniform resource locator (URL) service to link an original URL for web-based content to a print URL that can be embedded in a source document as a widget, such as a hypertext link, an interactive control, or a combination thereof. The embedded widget can be activated when the web-based content associated with the original URL is desired to be printed via the cloud print service. However, it is to be appreciated that the exemplary embodiments described herein are also amenable to linking multiple original URLs to the print URL, to linking an original URL for the source document to the print URL, to linking various types of web-based content to the print URL, and to embedding the widget in various types of source documents in various combinations.
Traditionally printing is done behind a firewall using either a network-connected or locally-connected printing device where document submission, conversion, and printing happen in the same environment. With the rapid emergence of cloud-based printing options, some or all of these activities are moving to the cloud and operating across firewalls. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,443,523 to Leone, III et al., assigned to Xerox Corporation of Norwalk, Conn., discloses a method for printing at a networked client site from a document processing application running on a remote server. Xerox and other businesses provide products and services that provide cloud print services that implement this methodology or similar methodologies.
A current challenge is in integrating a variety of web sources of content with cloud-based print services. For example, web-based content appears in blogs, social network messages and other postings, such as Twitter tweets, Facebook postings, Myspace postings, e-mail messages, chat room dialogs, instant message dialogs, online document repositories, and traditional web sites and web pages. One way to print such web-based content is the traditional driver based approach which may either use a File/Print pull-down or popup menu associated with the browser, a “Printer” icon associated with the browser, or a “Printer” icon/link embedded in the web-based content that uses embedded commands or script technologies, such as JavaScript, to bring up a standard operating system (OS) print driver window or to automatically activate the standard OS print driver. However, this does not work well for the emerging cloud print services which may receive content for printing via web uploads, application program interface (API) calls, e-mail messages, or other types of integration. These integrations to cloud print services usually involve the need to write customized code for the ultimate user experience or force users to use suboptimal methods, such as attachments to e-mail, to deliver the content for printing. In fact, if one wanted to print a blog article via a cloud print service, they would have no way to print it directly and the author of the blog would not be able to do anything to enable or facilitate cloud printing.
Based on the foregoing, there is a need for printing certain types of web-based content via cloud print services that cannot be printed in this manner. Additionally, there is a need for simplifying techniques for printing other types of web-based content that can currently be printed via cloud print services. Moreover, the simplified techniques should reduce the technical knowledge required for authors of web-based content and web applications to enable the printing of web-based content via cloud print services as well as the technical knowledge required for consumer users to print the corresponding web-based content.